Never Forget

I won't...

My Muse Seems to Have Fled

A Rather Mixed Bag

An entire weekend gone and I didn't post anything after Friday. Over the weekend I thought, "Hhhmm, I should sit down and post something. Anything." But I had nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bupkis.

Monday dawned and I set out for my place of employment. Got a late start. No big deal, my company does flex time. You get in, you do your eight, you're done. So I adjusted accordingly. But then...

At my local Dunkin' Donuts, had the old guy with two fistfuls of change. Seems one of his buddies sent him on the coffee run. One hand held the buddy's money, the other held his money. As he was ordering he seemed to have a crisis of confidence over which hand held whose money.

Of course, that occurred while the nice lady behind the counter was trying to get him to place his order. After having a prolonged sotto voce conversation with himself, old guy got things sorted out. Until he realized that he couldn't remember what his buddy wanted. Eventually he remembered, placed his order (as I wondered if it was actually possible for him to do so any slower than he actually did) and the rest of us poor slobs got to get our coffee and head out for work.

Aside: There are a number of "old guy behaviors" which I have alerted my progeny to be on the look out for in me as I age. The above, that's one of them. Another is driving in the left lane on the highway at 20 miles under the speed limit. (Or any lane for that matter!) A third is taking a corner in one's vehicle as if you have a trunk full of nitroglycerin. That is, if you go around a corner at greater than 5 MPH, your car will explode. If the kids notice me exhibiting any of these behaviors, they have my authorization to put me in a home. The caveat here is that the Missus has no vote in this process. She already claims that I act like I'm 80 years old. Or 12 years old. Kinda depends on the time of day I guess.

(Yes, yes, yes, I'll get to the opening graphic eventually. Patience. Patience.)

So I'm on the road, coming up on a "right turn on red" intersection. 'Lo and Behold! A gigantic truck pulling a trailer which appears to be loaded with about a bazillion tons of cast concrete objets d'art. Wonderful. As the truck accelerates at approximately 10 feet per day up the road, I'm thinking, "Maybe I should just take the day off. Turn off the road at the next intersection and just go home!"

But no, I'm in luck, Mr. Big Truck turns off the highway, clearing my path. 'Lo and Behold! Now I have a school bus in front of me.

Back in my day, there was one bus stop for an entire neighborhood. Nowadays I swear there is a bus stop every fifty feet. But we're on the main thoroughfare through my quaint New England seacoast village, so there aren't THAT many residences. But of course, there's at least one with a very young boy waiting with a very old lady to catch the bus.

Now people that age just aren't that spry. And of course the boy was rather young and small. So grandma had to assist him onto the bus. Once the little guy was aboard and grandma had mosied back down off the bus, the driver now just had to get up and do something within the vehicle. All the while I'm sitting there wondering if I'm going to make it to work before the first snow.

Eventually we're rolling again and fortunately the bus had no more stops and turned down the next side street. So eventually I get to work. Of course my colleagues, clever lads they are, all greet me with "Good Afternoon!" It's about 0745, not even close to lunch. But those are my work-mates, keeping me honest. (Smart a$$es!)

So I get the old computing device booted up, I log in and, as is my wont, I head over to The Lexicans to check out the "Daily Lex", then it hits me, I've missed three days in a row! Unprecedented. Unbelievable. Unconscionable. What, did I fall off the planet over the weekend? Did I even turn my computer on over the weekend? Actually I did but only for a few moments before the love of my life yelled up "Are you going to cut the grass today? Or should I go ahead and notify the state that they can turn our yard into a wild life preserve?"

So we cut grass. With a broken toe. (Now there's a story I could have blogged about!)

So Saturday was occupied with forced labor yard work.

Sunday, of course, we go to church. And now, of course, the NFL season has begun. So I, like many others, will be spending these last, lovely waning days of summer, glued to the idiot box watching football.

Yes, now I'm going to talk about the lead graphic. Geez, have you folks no patience at all?

For college ball, we have two "frowny" faces and a neutral. Colorado State lost. Army lost (and yes I follow the service academies as much as possible and root for those future officers). Now the neutral face you may have questions about. You may be saying, "Aren't you glad Michigan won? I thought you rooted for Michigan?"

Well, yes, I do, normally. But do you see who they played? Air Force! And I am retired Air Force. So I had real mixed feelings about that one. Yes, my son-in-law Big Time is a huge Michigan fan as is blog-buddy Buck. But still, they did beat a service academy and it was Air Force. Just sayin'.

Now as far as the pros go. New England won big and looked impressive, particularly on defense. But it was against the Titans so we'll reserve judgement for now. But dammit the Packers lost! I've been a fan of Green Bay since the Lombardi days. You know, Vince Lombardi, the guy the Super Bowl trophy is named after?

Of course, as I went to college in Colorado I also love the Broncos. (State law back then said you got in state tuition if you rooted for the Broncos. I kid.) Also the Nuke is a HUGE Denver fan, she was born when we lived in Denver so that must be in her blood somehow. I also really like Peyton Manning, even when he played for the Colts. And for a New England fan, that's saying a lot.

So the weekend was rather a mixed bag. And...

Excuse me, I hear someone knocking on the door...

Ah, it's my muse! Apparently she's back.

To Blog or Not to Blog

The Bard

That is the question...

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The spam and snarks of outrageous comments,
Or write a post to slam the trolls
And by counter-snarking end them?

Not that this has ever happened to me, mind you. Not yet anyway.

I did get one spam comment which didn't show up on the blog but in my e-mail. The comment itself made no sense in the context of the post and invited me to visit his/her blog. With excellent security software on board, I clicked on the link, confident that this software would warn me of a "dangerous" link. (It is very good at "protecting" me.)

The link had something to do with "How to buy land illegally in Spain". Not something I was interested in. Breaking the law isn't really my style. Nor do I wish to wind up on Interpol's "bad boy" list. Were I to consider becoming a law-breaker, I think I would do so on the domestic front. Avoid the whole international crime thing altogether.

I certainly would not want to force Hogday out of retirement to chase me down and "bring me to justice".

All that aside, it's been an interesting few weeks. Being back at the home office is better than traveling by far. Though one of the chaps I work for is a bit addled I think. Rather like working for this fellow:

Inspector Clouseau

He's a nice enough fellow, just seems a bit, shall we say, disorganized.

Well, I seem to have absolutely nothing else to say today. Pity really. I had such high hopes for today's post. So I'll quit now and leave you with one of my favorite Python bits, the Cheese Shop. (When in doubt, post a video, at least give the readers something to look at!)

Problem Solving the JOPA Way

Hat tip to the JOPA over on Facebook.

This was just too funny to not steal borrow.

Gotta love the JOPA!

Proud Father of Three JOPA Members. Father-in-Law to Two More.

Supporting the JOPA Since 2001

Memphis Sky... and the Vah-Too

Sunday night, or Labor Day Eve as the Nuke might term it. There I am, sitting in CIC (Combat Information Center) at Chez Sarge, fooling around on the computer as I am wont to do, when the phone rings. It's the WSO.

Me: "What's up sweetie?"

The WSO: "Oh, we're all huddled in the closet. Waiting for the storm to pass."

The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I order that the Intellicast weather site be brought up on the main display.

Imaginary Subordinate (IS): "Intellicast coming up on main viewer Captain!"

Me: "Center the display on Memphis."

IS: "Memphis as in ...?"

Me: "Tennessee of course. Make it quick!"

IS" "Making it quick. Aye!"

(Some of the events in this post have been overly-dramatized for, hopefully, comedic effect. No imaginary watch standers were injured, abused or otherwise perturbed in the writing of this post.)

As the weather display comes up, I can see that there is a tornado watch in effect for much of the area around Memphis. And to the southeast there is a tornado warning in effect. As you may gather at this point, I have family in Memphis.

The Nuke lives in Memphis. The Missus, the WSO and Little Bit are visiting Memphis. So some people who are near and dear to me were, potentially, in harm's way.

Now the huddling in the closet bit? We learned that while stationed in Omaha, Nebraska. An area prone to tornadoes and such. For some reason, base housing did not have basements. A very useful thing to have in tornado country. (Ah, I know the reason! Cheaper to build base housing if you don't put in a basement. Probably a fiscally sound decision made by some spreadsheet cowboy in the Pentagon. But when you're observing a funnel cloud on it's way ground-ward a mere mile from one's position, it feels like they SHOULD HAVE BUILT THE HOUSE OVER A DAMN BASEMENT! But I digress...)

Those who know such things will advise those without basements to head for an interior room in the house. A closet under a staircase is good. (We had one of those.) A bathroom on a lower level is also good (all those pipes and such provide reinforcement, I guess.)

So there were a number of times in Omaha that the Old AF Sarge Tribe huddled in the closet, listening to storm reports on a battery-powered radio. I'm very pleased that the Nuke and the WSO did not forget their early Air Force training. (Yeah, yeah, I know. The Navy probably teaches that stuff too. Just trying to give my old service SOME credit.)

While talking to the WSO, she informed me that the "All Clear" had been sounded and the troops were returning to their positions. In front of the TV, watching a movie. And as she normally does, the WSO said "Well, Dad. I've got to let you go."

She always says that like I imagine a supervisor would tell someone that they've either been laid-off or fired. "Gee Jonesy, you've been a good worker. But times are hard and we're gonna have to let you go."

And yes, she does it intentionally. She thinks it's funny. And really it is. It's just part of the shtick for me and the WSO. As I've mentioned in the past, her sense of humor is as goofy as mine.

So the WSO let me go. So to speak. And I returned to my computing activities. (Well, I wasn't actually doing any computing. Just goofing around you know. Surfing the web, reading my blog-buddies' latest posts, etc., etc. - May have been a game of Free Cell or three in the mix as well, I dunno.)

Then the Nuke calls. Immediately I'm thinking the storm has intensified or some other natural disaster is about to commence. Nope. She just wants to know if I received the video she made on her cell phone of the lightning gracing the Memphis sky.

Checking the old e-mail account, sure enough, there's a short video. Upon watching it, I can hear my wife, daughters and granddaughter in the background. And I catch something which always gives me a chuckle. (That's a hint that I'm about to address the second part of the title of this post. And I'm sure you're all wondering, "What the heck is a Vah-Too?")

At about the five-second mark of the video, you can hear Little Bit exclaim "My Vah-Too!" And for a second or so she's trying to get the attention of the adults in the room.

Now a "Vah-Too" is what Little Bit calls her pacifier. Don't know why. We've consulted the family's linguistic expert (that would be me) and other sources and we cannot for the life of us figure out why Little Bit calls her pacifier a Vah-Too. But she does.

For amusement she likes to fling her Vah-Too away from her to make the adults fetch it. Normally she will fling it into anything nearby which is dirty, dusty, unswept or otherwise unclean. So of course, part of the game of fetch involves cleaning the Vah-Too off prior to returning it to Little Bit.

On family outings, each member of the family is detailed to carry a spare Vah-Too. Sort of like carrying extra ammo for the machine gun I suppose. WSO, as Little Bit's Mom, acts as the Assistant Vah-Too. Which means she usually has a zip-lock bag with 4 or 5 spare Vah-Toos. Believe me, on a long outing Little Bit can go through a lot of Vah-Toos. Primarily because of the inability to rinse off the Vah-Too (once it's been flung) on an outing around town, or at the beach, or at the zoo. (When we rode the train at the zoo in Virginia Beach, Little Bit threw her Vah-Too from the train. Not to make us play fetch, but because she was perturbed and annoyed at being made to ride the train.)

Now in the video (corroboration was provided by the Nuke post facto) apparently, when Little Bit proclaims "My Vah-Too!", she had just flung the Vah-Too off of the balcony of the Nuke's apartment. Where they were watching (and filming) the lightning. As the adults continue to chat, Little Bit again indicates that her Vah-Too has gone over the side. As it were.

Eventually the Missus (Grandma) realizes that something is amiss, and asks Little Bit if she has lost her Vah-Too. The "oh oh" you hear in the video is Little Bit indicating, "Why yes Grandmother. Apparently I have tossed my Vah-Too off of the balcony. And at the moment I am sans Vah-too. Be a dear and get me another, would you?)

Well the Nuke tells me that she dashed out in the storm (which was winding down) and rescued the discarded Vah-Too. Little Bit caught everyone's attention in time in order to activate the family "Vah-Too Overboard" drill and the jettisoned Vah-Too was rescued. And apparently none the worse for the experience.

I forgot to ask the Nuke if it was necessary to perform a "Williamson Turn" during the Vah-Too Overboard evolution.

Probably not. I don't think that would be a reasonable or even possible maneuver in an apartment building. I'll ask her later. Just for the record, I like keeping my facts straight.

It's the amateur historian in me I guess.

Update
Apparently I did not have all of my facts straight. While debriefing the Nuke and the WSO it was made clear to me that the Nuke did not personally rescue the Vah-Too. Seems she was the Officer-of-the-Deck (OOD) during the storm viewing evolution and actually saw the Vah-Too go over the side.

At this point she ordered a fellow watch stander to recover the Vah-Too. Which he did.

That Nuke. A Surface Warfare Officer through and through. Someday I'll have to tell the story of the Nuke and "her" sonar dome. Entertaining. But as I said, a story for another time.

September Is Here

Yes, it's September. The NFL season begins later this week and the college football season has begun. It's not something that I'm over-excited about, but as a New Englander and given how poorly the Red Sox season has gone so far, it's something. I guess.

Now I'm not a huge sports fanatic. But I do enjoy the games. My enjoyment is somewhat diluted given how things have gone so far for some of the teams I root for. See the graphic above. The frowny-faces kind of tell the story.

Michigan getting blown out by Alabama is a bummer. Big Time's Mom and Dad are both Michigan Alumni and huge fans of the Wolverines. I became a fan of Michigan a couple of years back when the Missus and I flew out to Michigan for Little Bit's baptism.

Ma and Pa Big Time arranged an excellent weekend for this momentous occasion in our granddaughter's young life. We were to go to the Big House to see Michigan play UMass. As we'd never done the college game live and in person thing before, we were intrigued and kind of excited to go.

First of all there was the tail-gating. That was a lot of fun. Seems that Ma & Pa Big Time have had the same seats at the stadium for a long time. They also have been tail-gating in the same spot for a similar length of time. I mean they literally knew everyone. And introduced us to everyone. We had an absolute blast.

The game itself was actually competitive with the issue not being decided until the second half. But the atmosphere of a Division I game was something to behold. And the stadium (which is known, as noted above, as the "Big House") was very nice. We had an incredible time. Absolutely incredible.

Now that Notre Dame - Navy score? Well, those of you who are new to the blog should know that Son-in-Law #2 (aka TRex) is a graduate of the Boat School (aka the Naval Academy). That aside, I've been a Navy fan for a long time (with three kids and two kid-in-laws who have or are wearing the uniform of the Naval Service, it kind of comes with the territory). So losing to Notre Dame, sucks. Heck Navy losing to anyone sucks.

Now we finally get to the one happy face on the board. Colorado State versus Colorado. I am a graduate of Colorado State, so it's only natural that I would root for them. Especially versus their in-state rival Colorado. So that was good to see. (I actually did catch some of the game on TV, in between doing other things.)

Well, enough about sports, for now. No doubt I shall someday wax eloquent upon this topic, having been a bit of an athlete in my youth. But that is for another day.

Ma Vie Militaire (Part V)

AN/APQ-109  Radar Set

That beast in the photo above is the reason I was at Lowry AFB, Colorado in the summer of 1975. (Was that really 37 years ago!) For I was to be trained in the care and feeding of the Weapon Control System (WCS) as mounted in the F-4C and F-4D aircraft.

While refreshing my memory of those days of  yesteryear, I came across something called the "Harpoon Database". For those who don't know, "Harpoon" is a naval simulation. The database I came across is apparently associated with the simulation. In the interests of full disclosure, the database claims that the AN/APQ-109 was only used on the F-4D. Wrong! It was also used on the F-4C. I would know as I worked on both variants of the F-4 while assigned to Kadena AB, Japan. Just thought I'd mention that.

Update: I do believe I am incorrect. F-4C carried the AN/APQ-100, so that there Harpoon DB is correct. My bad, the Sarge, 20 March 2013.

Oh, and for the acronym-challenged. AFB = Air Force Base. AB = Air Base. Don't know why, but Air Force bases in the good old US of A were called Air Force Bases, those overseas were called Air Bases. Don't know why, don't much care. It is what it is. Or perhaps was. Now-a-days I keep seeing references to "Joint Base Something-Or-Other". Guess that's for when multiple services occupy the same geographical location. I also would guess that this kind of thing also requires a staff of 30-40 people at the Five Sided Puzzle Palace (the Pentagon) to keep track of. That office is probably right down the corridor from the Office of Acronyms and Obscure Terminology. Your tax dollars at work. (There is, to my knowledge, no  such thing as the "Office of Acronyms and Obscure Terminology". If there is, it probably has a less obvious name.)

Now the Tech School at Lowry was rather long. I arrived there in July of '75 and departed in January of '76. While much of this time was consumed with technical training, I did manage to find time for youthful hi-jinks and other forms of entertainment.

But as I mentioned in my last installment of this series, the staff at the school actually treated us like human beings and potentially valuable members of Uncle Sam's Aerial Follies. I say potential because Basic Training didn't really give us any, shall we say, "marketable" skills upon completion. To my knowledge there are no paying jobs which require the ability to fold underwear to exacting specifications and the ability to march. For the former, they have machines. For the latter, you usually need another skill to go with that, such as being able to play a musical instrument.

The first part of the school covered basic electronics. How to follow a wiring diagram. What a resistor is, what a capacitor is, etc. etc. I don't remember all too much of this phase. Other than that for me, it was fairly simple. Of course, the intent of the course was not to make us all Electrical Engineers, but to give us enough knowledge to complete the second part of the school. Which was learning about WCS on the F-4.

My memories of this second part of the school are somewhat misty after all this time. But I do remember the odd bits and pieces.

The strongest memory was of my instructor. He was a Staff Sergeant (paygrade of E-5 for those of you keeping score at home) and as I recall, he was a very big dude. The kind of guy you don't want to piss off, the kind of guy you want to have your back in a donny-brook. He was also one of those "gentle giant" types. Amicable and genuinely interested in having us succeed at our chosen profession.

Problem was, those higher up the food chain thought this knowledge was best acquired by tracing out schematics with colored pencils. I kid you not. We spent very little time actually doing hands-on things with the actual equipment. Most of our six-hours in the class room evolved around "now take your red pencil and starting from plug J5, trace pin 5 down to where it goes into plug P5." I mean we did learn some, but not enough to actually work on the system. We wouldn't gain that knowledge until we were actually standing in front of the jet, with a crusty sergeant asking us, "So which unit would you check first if such-and-such is not working?"

Our instructor did try as much as humanly possible to get us on the system trainers. These were composed of actual aircraft hardware mounted on a test bench. Now as you may well imagine, the schools did not have the same priority as the actual fighter wings when it came to getting replacement parts. So when a trainer broke down, it would typically stay broke for weeks, if not months, at a time. So time on the trainers was much sought after, but hard to get.

Nevertheless, learn we did. At least enough to graduate from the school and at least enough for those crusty sergeants on the flight line to have something to work with. (At the very least I could tell the difference between a Synchronizer and a Target Intercept Computer, and so on and so forth.)

Other things which occurred at Tech School were more memorable due to the humor involved.

In those days my best buddy from high school was also at Lowry going through a different (and much longer) Tech School. We would hang out as much as possible given our being in different squadrons and having different schedules. Typically this was on weekends.

One weekend we went forth to downtown Denver. (I should also note that he had a car, I did too, but it was still in Vermont.) We found this hobby shop and there I found something I just had to have. It was a non-firing but very accurate reproduction of one of these:

Maschinenpistole-40

This bad boy (the MP-40) was the standard weapon carried by German Army infantry sergeants during WW-Deuce. This sucker looked and felt like the real thing. Even field stripped the same way as the real thing. (Note: Having had the opportunity to handle the real thing, I know of what I speak.) So of course, I had to have it. So I bought it for the then princely sum of 100 American dollars.

When we got back to base I just had to show it off. My buddies all thought it awesome and cool, etc. etc.

Now we had this one a$$hole who lived on our floor in the dormitory (that's Air Force-speak for barracks by the way). Seems like every Saturday he liked to go out and get completely messed up. Then return to the dorm and make lots of noise regarding his dislike of the Air Force and all who were in it. (Why the hell this punk ever enlisted is beyond me. They should have thrown this clown out a lot sooner AND put his recruiter in jail. He was that bad!)

So there it was, a Saturday night (actually it was probably Sunday morning) and our local a$$hole comes back from downtown with a snoot-full and decides it would be funny to wander up and down the corridors banging on doors and shouting at the top of his lungs. Bloody hysterical, to him, I'm sure. But his reign of a$$holeness was about to end.

My roomie and I both woke up, unhappy campers at having our beauty rest interrupted. As we're about to go deal with His Royal Pain-in-the-Ass, roomie says to me "Hey, grab your fake MP and let's scare the crap out of this a-hole".

So yours truly grabs his MP out of his locker and out into the hallway we went. 'Lo and Behold, Airman A$$hole is just about ready to pound on our door. He's right in front of us. He's paused in mid-knock when the barrel of the faux machine pistol is presented to his drunken mug. As his alcohol-addled brain is trying to process just what the heck is going on, yours truly racks back the charging handle and says, "Prepare to meet your Maker, you drunken bastard."

At this point, Airman A$$hole literally wets his pants. Then crumbles to his knees and starts begging us not to kill him. This is how the rest of the conservation went, near as I can recall:

Roomie: "What do you think? Should we let him off this time?"

Moi: "Why, so he can just do the same thing next weekend?"

Airman A-Hole" "Please, please, please don't kill me. I'll never do this again, I swear!"

Moi: "I dunno roomie, he seems really sincere."

Roomie: "Ah screw it, just blow his head off so we can all go back to sleep."

Airman A-Hole: "No, no, no, no, please."

Moi: "Ah what the hell. We can clean the mess up in the morning. We'll tell the First Sergeant we caught him trying to break into our room."

Airman A-Hole" "Please, please, please don't kill me."

Roomie: "Hold off for a minute..."

My roomie grabs the guy by his shoulders and says, "We're tired of this crap. If you ever pull this sh!t again, we will kill you. Now beat it!"

At this point Airman A$$hole scrambles to his feet and heads down the hallway at near-Olympic qualifying speed.

Upon returning to our room, my roomie realizes that we could be in awfully deep doo-doo for this night's little episode. Pondering this, I realized that yeah, we could be facing some pretty serious crap. We both went back to bed a wee bit nervous over what the "Powers That Be" might do to a pair of airmen who had threatened the life of a fellow airman. Even though it was with a fake weapon.

The next day, Airman A$$hole was telling everyone about the seriously weird dream he'd had the night before. Seems that he'd had a dream that the German Army had taken over Lowry and that the GESTAPO was just about to execute him when he woke up. As he told it, the dream was so realistic that he'd actually wet his pants.

Dude did not stop drinking. But he did stop his antics in the dorm upon his return from his drunken sojourns downtown. He was later dishonorably discharged for drug use. I suppose that's a happy ending for the Air Force, if not for him.

Oh, and we never ever ever told anyone else who wasn't there about that night. But I think the First Sergeant knew. Especially after he'd asked to see my new toy. After praising its coolness and authentic look, he turned to roomie and I and said, "Just don't shoot any drunks with it. Okay?" And walked off.

I'm hear to tell you, a good First Sergeant doesn't miss anything. He hears all and sees all. But he also knows when to let things slide. Usually after a nod and a wink which means, "Don't you EVER do that again."

Roger that First Sergeant.

Roger that.